Articles on Left-handedness

These have been provided as a reference to a
number of questions posted periodically in the newsgroup alt.lefthanded.

If is also worth looking out for "Frequently
Asked Questions for the Left-Handed Population" posted
periodically to alt.lefthanded and the general newsgroups alt.answers
and news.answers. It is also available via anonymous ftp from:

Four million Britains can't be
right by Alex Valentine

Four million people in Britain have something
in common with Jack the Ripper. He was one of an unfortunate
minority-the left-handed.

Unfortunate, because not only are they regarded
as "odd" and "different" but the words that
mean "left" all have unpleasant connotations.

The French word gauche also means clumsy, and
the Latin sinister even has tones of evil.

Think too of the nicknames which are always
given to the left-handers. They vary in different parts of the
country but "cock-handed," "bang-handed,"
"cam-handed," "dolly-pawed," "cuddie-wifted"
or just plain "squippy" all come to the same thing -that
somehow or other all is not right with the left.

If it were just mild abuse it might not be so
bad - the fact is that it's dammed difficult being a left-hander.

If youare left-handed you will have thought
about the problem often enough. If not, you've probably given it
a passing thought, and lightheartedly dismissed the difficulties.'
But the three questions that should be asked are:

Why are people left-handed ?

Just how difficult is it to be left-handed
?

Can anything be done to make the left-handedness
easier ?

The obvious and logical answer of the left-hander
to the first question is "why not-why should it be a right-hander's
world?"

And there is no real answer to that. It is
certain that the majority of the world is right-handed, but
beyond that there is only conjecture, theory, pseudo-science and
folklore.

Some so-called experts say that it's because
the brain is divided into two parts which control the opposite
sides of the body-the left-hand part of the brain controls the
right side of the body and the other way round.

Normally, this argument goes, the dominant part
of the brain is on the left, therefore it controls the right-and
that is supposed to explain why most people are right-handed.

Unfortunately for these theorists, studies of
left-handed people do not show their brains have developed in any
different way.

Another school of thought argues that it's all
to do with the way in which the body is built. If you divide the
human body in two from head to toe you will find that the right-hand
side weights more than the left (there being more weight of liver
and lungs on the right). So, says this theory, human beings tend
to counter-balance their weight on the left foot, leaving the
right foot and the right hand free for action.

Again that might be fine if there were any
evidence that the bodies of left-handed people are any different
from the rest. And there isn't.

The next guess is whether or not it's
hereditary. This is now largely discredited, and since my right-handed
wife and my right-handed self have three left-handed children, I'm
not really surprised.

This in turn raises the question of whether or
not left-handed children tend to copy each other, if not their
parents. Again, it's inconclusive - for instance, of the Dionne
Quintuplets, only one of the five was a left-handed.

By now it's getting into the realm of old wives'
tales. It depends on which breast the baby was mainly fed on
which arm it was carried about. . . whether it was bathed
in a bath where the water ran out from left to right or right to
left. . . .

Most left-handers have long since given up
trying to find out. What they are more concerned with is the fact
that they live in a right-handed world.

True, schools have now stopped forcing left-handed
children to write with their other hand. Educational authorities
have realised that this is likely to introduce nervous tensions
into children (for instance, it is now, believed that the late
King George VI suffered from a stammer because a tough governess
at Buckingham Palace forced him to change his writing hand).

THE DIFFICULTY of writing with the left hand is
obvious- the writing hand coves up what the person has written,
and, before the days of the ball-point pen, smudged all the work.

But there are other less obvious handicaps that
the left-hander has to fight against-the fact that potato peelers
usually only have their cutting blades placed for right-handers,
that irons and ironing boards are designed in such a way that
when used by a left-hander the flex from the iron hangs over the
work.

Knitting patterns are basically designed for
right-handers, so are cork-screws and clockwork mechanisms-
remember, for a left-handed person the natural motion is to turn
the hand anti-clockwise.

But the left-handers are beginning to unite. in
Britain they now have their own association run by Michael
Barsley, a television producer and broadcaster, who has recently
had his "Left Handed Book" published as a paperback by
Pan.

The Left Handers' Association is agitating for
legislation to recognise their difficulties, and for designers to
think about them. They point out that even that most modern of
all inventions-the computer-was designed for right-handed people.

They are also trying to get people to think of
them as people, with certain handicaps which should be recognised
without either ridicule or contempt.

It is, they point out, just a matter of some
thought and consideration. There is no point in shouting at a
left-handed child because it cannot copy the actions of a right-handed
person who is demonstrating how to knit or tie a bow. The thing
is to remember that the left-handed child uses opposite hands, so
why not face the child and act as a "mirror" so that
the child copies what it sees?

And, if you have a left-handed guest, why not
put him or her (quietly and without making a big thing of it) at
a left-handed corner of the table so that their elbow won't be
jogged whilst they are holding a cup or glass?

Already, just off London's Carnaby Street,
there's a special shop for left-'handers which has items like
sauce-pans with lips that pour on either side, potato peelers
with blades on both sides, left-handed scissors, left-handed
ironing boards, and even left-handed playing cards.

It might be some consolation to left-handers to
know that as well as Jack the Ripper they include such people as
Leonardo da Vincl, Charlie Chaplin, Paul McCartney, Danny Kaye,
Terence Stamp, Kim Novak, Denis Compton, Gary Sobers, Ann Haydon
Jones and Rod Laver.

Indeed, the left-handers of the world ara
turning up as one in every tenth person, and if you think in
terms of any single race, colour or creed, who else makes up such
a group ?

Maybe "Cack-handers of the World, Unite!"
is not exactly the sort of slogan to set the world on fire, but
to anyone who is left-handed in a right-handed world it's heavy
propaganda.

On Hand-writing styles

The direction of flow of a left-hander writing
is different to that of a right-hander, although each group shows
different behaviour.

Traditional Chinese writing is in columns,
right to left column with the bind of a closed book on the right
showing it's cover (back to front according to English). Modern
Chinese is written left to right horizontally. The left-handed
taboo is still strong in China, and comments about using chop
sticks left handed and how awkward it looks etc.!

Arabic, Urdu and Persian are all written right
to left (same script). It has been argued that this is the
correct way for right handers to write.

"From the Left Handers
newsletter No6 March 1970 organised by Mr Michael Barsley"

Mr Sami Harmarneh, a famous Arabic scholar and
Head of the Division of Medical Sciences at the Smithsonian
Institution, Washington DC sent the following notes to Mr Heinz
Nrodon, of New Doctor, who recently published one of my articles
on left-handedness.

"Left-handedness is less encountered in
the Middle East than in England or the US. Although there are no
official statistics available it seems to me that the percentage
is less than 1%. It is also greatly discouraged... I think
writing from right to left as is the case in Arabic and Hebrew
makes it easier to use the right hand. (This I would question,
since the movement of the hand and arm is towards the body, a
constriction we left-handers feel). A friend in Beirut writes
Arabic in the right hand whilst using his left hand for writing
English and French. Very interesting case!" Dr. Hamarneh
adds: "I do not have any examples to give relative to
dyslexia; however, I know of one case wherein a six-year-old
child was taught English and Arabic, and in one instance, in
writing his name, he wrote it backwards. He mixed the Arabic
approach with the English." On the other hand, as it were,
three years ago I meet the left-handed Libyan Director of Culture
and Tourism, who insisted that all Arabs should write left-handed!
I am dealing with handwriting in detail in my next book, but
would meanwhile welcome any further opinions on this subject."

A Right Sinister Lot Are We
Left-Handers Who,
one day, may be a majority

by John Austin, Radio Times ? Date unknown

If you're cack-handed, coochy-pawed, kefty,
keggy, wacky or llaw bwt and look like a praying mantis when you
write, then you are left-handed - an unshifted sinistral. And you
probably have much in common with Kenneth Haigh, star of Man at
the Top...

KENNETH HAIGH'S performance when slicing a loaf
of bread should be granted an "X" certificate.
Everybody agrees.

It seems impossible that Haigh, star of Man at
the Top, is ever going to cut his round of toast without first
severing the finger-tips of his right hand, and those in the
kitchen cringe in anticipation as the blade cuts swiftly deeper.

"Frightens the life out of them,"
says Haigh cheerfully. "You should see their faces."

I know how he feels. Every time I make out a
cheque to the landlord of my local pub, with the book sloped at
an acute angle and my hand sort of upside-down, like a praying
mantis, those nearby, watch, mouths agape, and mutter: "His
mother must have been frightened by a Chinaman," or
something similar.

It is something all we left-handers learn to
accept with amused tolerance. But we arc also much maligned.

Sinistrals, the scientist call us. So, from the
start, we are bracketed with all things unpleasant, nasty and
evil. In contrast the other lot are dextrals, all neat, clever,
mentally adroit and dextrous right-handers.

They are the goodies and we the baddies, and it
seems that things are the same wherever poor southpaws go. In
France, for instance, we are gauche (awkward or clumsy); in Italy
mancini (crooked or maimed); in Portugal canhoto (weak and
mischievous); in Spain zurdo (the wrong way), and even aboard a
gipsy caravan there is no escape. In Romany it is bongo, meaning
crooked or evil, and our own home-bred word "left"
comes from Middle-English and means "weak".

A bleak prospect, and Haigh, pouring wine with
his left hand and smoking a cigar with his right, was wondering
why a left-handed compliment should be regarded as an insult.

There are 88 ways of saying "left-handed"
according to the Dialect and Folk Studies Institute of Leeds
University, who are to produce a dialect atlas of Britain in
three years' time. One that they have missed out originates, I
believe, from the Rhondda Valley where I, and my ilk, were known
as llaw bwt, which is a kindly way of saying a man is funny-handed.

The doctors, too, are at us. The Royal College
of General Practitioners' journal announced, earlier this year,
that doctors are to conduct a survey to discover whether the
traditionally left-handed Kerr and Carr families are still
southpaw. Apparently, "Carr-handed," "Kerr-handed"
and "Carry-handed" are still in the vernacular to
describe you know what, and the name is said to derive from the
Gaelic caerr, meaning "awkward."

The Kerrs, very sensibly, built Scottish
castles in which the spiral staircases gave great advantage to
left-handed swordsmen.

Other busy doctors, as Wisconsin University in
American, interviewed numerous university woman of the district,
and found out that seven out of 10 preferred as left-handed
squeeze, cuddle, or whatever. This, say the doctors, is due to
the caveman instinct, as primitive man kept his club in his right
hand while courting, to ward off wild beasts and rival suitors,
and was therefore forced to tickle his fancy with his left.

However, the theory does not seem to fit in
with expert finds that the majority of Stone Age tools found were
for the left-handed, or the fact somebody else found out that
more than half the population was southpaw in the Bronze Age.

Haigh, is like me, an unshifted sinistral,
someone who has either not been forced to change hands, or has
resisted any attempts to make him change. He dimly remembers the
nuns who taught him trying to switch his pen from an inky left
hand to a reluctant right, but they probably wilted under the
stubborn glare which he keeps to this day.

The 40-year-old son of a Yorkshire miner, he is
also politically Left.

"I had to be," he explains. "Otherwise,
my father would have given me a right-hander.

"One thing I remember clearly as a small
boy, is laying the table for my mother. It didn't save her any
time, because I always laid for left-handed people and she had to
follow on behind me switching the knives and forks around."

It is true, he says, that left-handed
cricketers are very good, and he had often heard that cack-handed
babies abandoned near the Yorkshire cricket grounds of Headingly
and Bramall Lane were immediately taken to the nets.

He wondered whether primates were predominantly
right-handed. The man I rang at the zoo said he didn't have time
to look it up, but as far as he knew they grabbed their food with
whichever hand they weren't scratching with.

Japanese wartime chief, General Tojo, got his
doctor to put an "X" on his chest, over his heart, when
he decided to shoot himself, then missed. This, said his wife,
was because he was left-handed. The general was not a credit to
us.

Lewis Carroll, however, rose to brilliance,
though while normally left-handed he was forced to write with his
right. The resulting frustration probably produced the stammer
which, it is claimed, is often typical of shifted sinistals.

Haigh and I mused over the facts: men are more
likely to be left-handed than women ("probably because they
do more courting," says Haigh). Left-handedness is more
prevalent among twins. If you are cooky-pawed you are likely to
be cooky-footed as well, and you will probably see better with
your scammy eye and hear better with your gallock ear.

Babies, we leaned, are born ambidextrous, and
34 out of every 100 would become naturally llaw bwt if allowed to
develop without interfernece. However, many are coerced by
treacherous parents and teachers, who push things into their tiny
right hands though they may plead for rusks with their left.

Anything to fit the poor little blighters into
a right-handed world where hockey sticks, tin openers, scissors,
rifles and cheque books with stubs on the left will be no problem
to them.

Despite this, statisticians have worked out
that there are at least 200 million left-handers in the world out
of a population of over 3,750 million, and more than five million
of us (which seems a lot) live in Britain.

Miltitant southpaw leaders have, from time to
time, arisen, forming associations and attempted to pressure
people who make turnstiles into providing coin slots on the left,
as well as the right. As a result of their efforts it is possible,
if you look far enough, to buy left-handed golf clubs, saxophones,
pencil sharpeners, and men's shirts which button the other way
around. Or, so I'm told.

Kenneth Haigh is at present campaigning for a
left-handed grapefruit-slicer, because the one he has got now is
driving him potty. Like most sinistrals, he is more ambidextrous
than most dextrals.

There may be great gnashing of teeth in years
to come as the proportion of left-handers being born is steadily
increasing, and the scientists don't know why. One day, when I'm
long gone, we will again be a majority.

Come the revolution, and all right-handers will
be known, as grotty-fingered, or bungy-mitted; humorous foremen
will send green apprentices to fetch right-handed spanners, and
so on.

On the other hand...

Horizon - Mystery of the Left Hand Monday 9:30
BBC2 (from Radio times 2-8 February 1985)

Is there any advantage in being left-handed?
Ambidextrous Alan Bestic looks at a scientific theory.

IN YEARS to come students of architecture
gazing at the dramatic Lloyd's headquarters now nearing
completion in London may tell each of that it was designed by the
Richard Rogers Partnership. They will be unlikely to add that two
of the three partners were left-handed. Professor Norman
Geschwind, head of Harvard University's neurology department
until his death recently, would have seized on the point. One of
his conclusions from a deep study of left-handed people, examined
in Horizon, was that many had the qualities which made good
architects.

He based much of his work on the fact that
people are left-handed because the right hemisheres of their
brains arc dominant. Right-handers - roughly nine out of ten of
us - have more highly developed left hemisheres.The balance, he
claimed, is determined in the womb by the level at the male sex
hormone, testosterone, the foetus's sensitivity to it or both.

Left-handers were likely to be good architects,
he maintained, because the right hemisphere of the brain controls
spatia skills, the ability to think in three-dimensional terms.
For reasons less clear, but probably related to the dominance of
the right side of the brain, they also may be good at computer-programming
and tennis.

Almost half the world's leading tennis players
are left-handed.

Disadvantages, however, out-weigh those plus
factors. The left hemisphere governs the ability to learn
languages. So left-handers are inclined to be less able linguists.
And they may find more basic skills difficult to acquire.
According to Professsor Geschwind, those who stammer, have
difficulty learning to read or write or who are dyslexic
outnumber by ten to one right-handers with these problems.

His studies have shown, too, that twice as many
left-handers suffer from migraine, allergies and other ailments
caused by immune system disorders, though here the reasons are
more complex. Testosterone influences the thymus gland which
teaches white blood cells to fight external enemies when they
attack the body, causing disease. A high level of testosterone
can interfere with this education, so white cells may allow
enemies through as well as attacking friends in the body.

Boys, he maintained, are more likely than girls
to be left-handed because they manufacture large quantities of
testosterone while in the womb - much more than in childhood and
almost as much as in adolescence. girls in the womb do not
produce it and, left to them-selves, would never be left-handed.
Their mothers, however, produce it as a by-product of female
hormones, but the level is low. So there are fewer left-handed
girls.

John Young, one of the left-handed partners in
the Richard Rogers Partnership, respects Professor Geschwind's
impeccable academic qualifications. He does not believe, however,
that being left-handed has influenced his life.

He holds a tennis racket in his left hand, it
is true, but plays badly. He does not suffer from allergies,
migraine or any other ailment related to immune system disorders.
He had no difficulty learning to read or write. And certainly he
is poor linguist. When he went to work in Paris some years ago he
found that his almost forgotten A-level French flowered into
fluency with remarkable speed.

Canny Professor Geschwind, of course, would
have asked what he was doing in Paris and would not have been
surprised to learn that John Young was deeply involved with the
construction of the world-renowned Pompidou Centre.

Could it be totally coincidental, he would have
asked, that the same left-handed architect was even more deeply
involved in the design of the Lloyd's headquarters? And here John
Young edges a little closer to the professor's belief that left-handed
people have an enhanced ability to think in three dimensions.

The Lloyd's design, he says, certainly posed
three-dimensional puzzles. The partnership solved them by turning
the building inside out, putting the services - lifts, stairs,
toilets and heating, telephone and electricity systems - outside,
thus increasing the actual space for working. Because they wanted
as much natural light as possible, they folded their structure
round a central space, creating a building with a glass-capped
hole in the middle, so to speak, so that light came from two
sources. Professor Geschwind would have claimed with
justification that it would be difficult to imagine an
architectural concept more tri-dimensional than that.